


Baby, Kiss Me

by bumblebee_rose



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 10:58:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15884664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bumblebee_rose/pseuds/bumblebee_rose
Summary: She wasn’t surprised when she grabbed onto the collar of his shirt with both hands, her French manicured nails pressing into her palms; she thought of doing it every time she saw the pressed men’s formal wear in the French store windows, how it would feel to have him locked in her grasp.“Kiss me. Right now.” She said, staring up at his face, she was desperate and he knew it, she was Psyche and he was Cupid, and she was breaking every damn rule there was. “Please.” She added, as an afterthought, before he cupped her cheeks roughly in his hands and brought his lips down to hers.





	Baby, Kiss Me

**Author's Note:**

> The missing-you post France fic thats a week late but still here.

Nothing about that day surprised her

She wasn’t surprised when her plane was delayed, she’s been on far too many flights to be bothered by it. The usual intercom voice that was a bit too cheerful for five in the morning informing them on Something about air traffic, or the runway being blocked, or refueling, she doesn’t care to know, really.

She wasn’t surprised by the groans and complaints from everyone around them. Fast paced French coming from red and mauve stained lips accompanied by the dropping of bags, and slouching in seats. She spent the time leaning her head on her sisters’ shoulder and eating almonds out of a bag labelled “Bénénuts”. 

“Cinq euros s'il vous plaît madame.” The man working behind the counter had said to her. She wasn’t surprised by that either, airport food was expensive by definition.

She wasn’t surprised by the in-flight movies, she had travelled with Air Canada dozens of times. They were always the same, a mix of recent films, none she would care to watch, that were all modified to fit the screen and had all the curse words taken out.

She wasn’t surprised to find Scott in her house when she walked through the door, sitting on her couch flipping through one of her old magazines. When she stepped onto the patterned carpet at her front door his head turned and his eyes locked onto hers. She could smell food coming from the kitchen, how typical of him to bring something over for her to eat, he was thoughtful that way.

He didn’t say anything at first. They talked every damn day over the phone, and her overseas charges were suffocating, yet he couldn’t string together two words to say to her.

“You’re late,” He said eventually, slowly standing up and tossing the magazine onto the couch, his eyes didn’t leave hers once. “I almost thought you’d decided to stay.” He smiled crookedly at her and slid his hands into his pockets, rocking back onto his heels.

She wasn’t surprised when she dropped all her bags and walked right over to him, not caring about the way her suitcases hit the wall and probably left scratches in the paint or that she had breakable souvenirs in her carry-on.

She wasn’t surprised when she grabbed onto the collar of his shirt with both hands, her French manicured nails pressing into her palms; she thought of doing it every time she saw the pressed men’s formal wear in the French store windows, how it would feel to have him locked in her grasp.

“Kiss me. Right now.” She said, staring up at his face, she was desperate and he knew it, she was Psyche and he was Cupid, and she was breaking every damn rule there was. “Please.” She added, as an afterthought, before he cupped her cheeks roughly in his hands and brought his lips down to hers.

 

She wasn’t surprised she kissed him, no, she wasn’t surprised at all. 

She wasn’t surprised because she didn’t go a damn day without thinking about him. 

 

She would sit on swirling metal chairs in quaint cafes and sip coffee from china cups and think of him. Of the dark mocha of his hair, freshy cut and clean, tangled in her fingers, brushing against her temple. Rich rolls of pain au chocolate that only reminded her of the taste of his skin, the sweetness of his name on the tip of her tongue. She couldn’t resist thinking about him when the sun started to set and tuned the world into the same gold that flecked in his eyes, the same gold that draped around their necks only six months before.

 

Standing on a bridge over the Seine, she tried her hardest not to cry, lovers locks only lamenting her loneliness, lethal like lupine. She couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to be loved like that, to be enamored of so highly that someone would want to irreversibly commit to her and throw away the key like a wildcard. Staring at the rows and rows of weathered and damaged metal she decided it must feel pretty good. it scared her, the fact that she knew in that moment she loved him enough, it scared her even more that she didn’t know how it made her feel.

She thinks her sister saw her swipe away a stray tear, but she didn’t say anything. Feelings were murky, and complicated, and hard to determine, she decided love was a taboo topic between them ever since that night in 2008 when she laid sobbing on Jordan’s shoulder over him. She told her sister the same thing then, that she loved him much more than she thought she could ever love anyone, and the silence between them was deafening. They don’t talk about love anymore, but they think about it constantly. 

 

It took four days for her to finally call him on the phone. It sat on her bed menacingly as she paced back and forth, picking it up only to throw it back down. Didn’t he miss her? Wouldn’t he want to hear her voice again? She certainly missed his. She missed talking to him, missed laughing at his jokes, and shaking her head at his off-key singing, missed the way his words felt only for her. 

But the time away was good for them because they needed to process everything that had happened, she needed to think very carefully about every hand on her shoulder, every kiss pressed to her temple, every time his arms around her waist felt so right. She needed to think about dancing in the street, and dark eyes in blue dresses, and the intention left on the cusp of every word he spoke. She really missed him though.

A walk around the street and twenty minutes later she pressed call, held her breath as her phone rang. Once, twice, three times and she was nervous, four times and she felt stupid, five and she almost pressed cancel, six and the phone clicked as she heard him say her name. Just her name, and she stopped breathing as she brought the phone up to her ear.

“I miss you.” She said before she could stop herself.

“I thought you would never call.” He said. She thought he would have said it back, that he missed her too.

“I thought you would have first” she admitted, a little put out.

“I didn’t want to distract you from your vacation.” He spoke in even words. Funny, seeing as he never seemed to mind before, gripping her arm so tight his fingers left marks, and keeping her eyes always searching out for the familiar hazel of his. Occupying her thoughts like the apartment above his that she couldn’t make herself let go of.

“I wish I could tell you, that you hadn’t” She said, and she knew he understood.

“Good,” he breathed “because I can’t either.”

 

She couldn’t help thinking about him when the three of them returned to the restaurant she had been to with him four years ago. There’s one guestbook in the entirety of France with _Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir_ scrawled in careful cursive inside and she couldn’t help but look. She was scared it wouldn’t be there anymore, four years is an awfully long time and an awfully large number of tourists, yet surely enough, about sixty pages back, there they were. She traced her fingers feather light over the ink, ran her thumb slowly over the edge of the paper, it wasn’t a lock, no, but it was permanent in its own way. She almost turned to call him over when she remembered they were a whole ocean apart, nothing felt quite the same without her fingers in the spaces between his.

Being in France made her want to feel loved, not that she wasn’t already by her mother and sister. Sure, they loved her but it was unconditional, familial, storge. She wanted to be loved passionately, red flags raised and lips clashing like war. Casualties and reparations that needed to be paid, heat all along the battlefield. She wanted to be loved with tenderness and touch, tactile travels that tainted her pale terra cotta skin. She thought he could love her that way, he skated like he could.

She moved the back of her spoon over the plate, drawing pictures in the viscosity of the strawberry puree. She didn’t like dessert, it was too sweet, making her teeth hurt and getting caught in the back of her throat. She used to wonder if he kissed sweetly, if the words that chased her ears would taste as good against her mouth. She wanted to know how his lips would feel against her own, she knew how they felt against her neck, her shoulder, the dip in her back, her hand, her temple, her cheek, but he never kissed her the one placed she wanted, well, there _and_ one other place but they were no where near close to that.

 

It was really all the speculation that did it. She thinks that if she had ever done it before she wouldn’t have thrown herself at him so easily. It happened though and there she was, kissing him in her kitchen for the first time, hands gripping his collar like a lifeline as his hands slipped down to her shoulders, then to her waist, then under her loose sweater, thumbs dangerously grazing the bottom of her ribs.

She pulls away from him then, her hands still attached to his shirt, and his fingers still making her skin buzz, and they’re both breathing heavily, lips almost touching. She lets go, crumpled fabric unfolding in her hands and laying wrinkled against his collarbone, bringing her hands down to rest on his chest, toying with one of his shirt buttons.

“I missed you.” She says, looking up at him

“I thought you’d never come home.” He says back, eyes searching hers. She isn’t sure what to make of it, does he regret it? He hasn’t removed his hands from her waistline so she thinks it was okay. He still hasn’t said _he_ missed her in return though, and she can’t remember for sure if he actually kissed her back.

 

_I don’t think we should have done that_ she thinks, because now she’s changed _everything_ , altered their gravity, thrown them off course. She cant really look at him, and she cant run away either so she wraps her arms around his neck because she doesn’t want to think, burying her face in his shoulder and pressing the front of her body against his. He holds her tightly back, of course he does, pulling her closer into him and grazing his lips across her neck. He doesn’t mention the kiss though, she knows he wont, they’ll go on pretending like they always do, he’ll stand much too close to her and she’ll hold her breath like she always does.

“I made you food,” He mumbles against her skin. “it might be cold though, I thought you would have been back sooner.” And she can feel him frown. She’s finding it very difficult to process his words because every time he speaks his lips move against her and send vibrations throughout her entire body.

“That’s okay.” She says, feeling a shiver run through her when his lips touch the spot just behind her ear. “I appreciate it,” she says, releasing him and taking a step back “but I was going to go grocery shopping too, get something sustainable”

“I could come with you,” he says, still holding her elbows “make sure you end up with more than a carton of eggs.” 

 

She says yes, a little cautiously, and slides into the passenger seat of his car as he volunteered to drive. He plays music she likes purposefully and she knows it, switching away from the country station casually and letting it rest on one that plays oldies. She stares out the window, humming along with the chorus the entire way, smiling when he recognises a song and sings a bit off key under his breath. The clouds above her are dark and grey, tell-tale signs of thunder will all the humidity, but she won’t chide the heat too much knowing soon enough frost will cover all of her windows.

He doesn’t leave her side in the grocery store. Never more than two steps away from her, constantly looking over he shoulder, pressing the front of his body against her back just to check for bruises on peaches. She remembers the time years back when he walked into practice with his neck covered in purple, barely hidden by the collar of his shirt. 

She didn’t know what to think, kept staring at them like they were drops of gold and not dark blemishes put there by another’s mouth. They didn’t talk about it, they never talked about it, but he touched her all the same, licked the arch of her neck and dragged his lips across her skin, caressed every curve with the burlap of his calloused hands. She doesn’t think she would mind damaging her blood vessels if he was the one that did it, she’d always wondered how it would feel.

 

He puts groceries in her fridge one by one, all food that wont easily rot since they’ll be leaving for a few days. Still green bananas on her counter, and apples in her fridge, cookies in her pantry and two fresh croissants to snack on that remind her of Paris and missing him. Its probably the reason she asks him to stay, takes him by the hand and settles against him on the couch. She needs to stop thinking about missing him because whenever she does she makes bad decisions and he doesn’t hesitate putting his arm around her, playing with her hair and rubbing circles into her shoulder with his thumb, but there’s a new electricity between them now.

They watch re-runs of old shows, Mulder and Scully chasing aliens through cities and Rachel trying to get her life together after her almost-marriage. Its weirdly reminiscent of them, people so irreversibly tied to each other that they can’t help but fall together, it’s a cliché and she knows it, but she doesn’t mind.

 

Every minute he stays is a countdown because either he sleeps in her bed that night or he doesn’t. Either he walks through her front door that night or her bedroom door, and its daunting, a candle burning until the wick is dangerously close to fizzling out.

He makes the choice ten minutes to midnight with his hand on her thigh, standing up and scratching the back of his neck.

“I should go.” He says

“You don’t have to.” She says, so quietly she can barely hear herself, staring craters into the woven carpet. She takes a deep breath, she knows she shouldn’t but she can’t help remembering how foreign and empty her bed felt in France. “You could stay. With me.” She says a bit louder, still not looking up.

“Are you sure?” He questions, and he sounds like he’s holding his breath.

“Yes.” She confirms, locking eyes with him, and she could swear the air around them shifts. “I missed……This” she says, gesturing around at her torn apart living room, couch cushions on the ground and an empty popcorn bowl on the table. She knows better now not to say she can’t stand being without him, he never reciprocates.

“I thought I’d never hear you happy to have your house in shambles.” He smiles, and she decides she doesn’t mind too much. You can repaint walls, fluff couch cushions, wash dishes, you can’t take back lost moments. He still won’t say he missed her though.

They brush their teeth together which is oddly domestic because he keeps looking over at her in the mirror and smiling like he has a secret, which she supposes he does. He doesn’t leave the bathroom when she washes her face either, but he does insist on putting her hair in a ponytail for her, which she decides isn’t terrible, and wants to try her lip scrub, that he later complains felt like rubbing rocks against his face. It really is all wondrously intimate and she almost forgets about the part where they’ll actually be sleeping until they both walk into her bedroom.

 

Its like the feeling when you’re at the top of a roller coaster, when you’re about to jump of a high dive into cold water, that’s how she feels standing across from him with only a king size mattress between them. She makes the first move because its her damn bed, pulling back the stiff covers that haven’t been touched in weeks and slipping like silk below the sheets, she vaguely registers him doing the same beside her as she reaches over to turn out the light.

 

Its much different in the dark because all of her senses are heightened as she lies staring at the celling. she can hear his breathing, even beside her, can feel the warmth radiating from his body. She can tell he’s turning into his side before he actually does, can sense his eyes on her. She knows he wants to say something, notices every time he takes a deep breath like he’s about to admit his crimes before a court, then stops himself before the words get out. He actually does say something at around the fourth time.

“Tess.” He says and his voice is low and soft.

“Yes.” She says back and she can hear her words like they’re shaking.

“I missed you so fucking much.” 

“I thought you’d never say that.” Is the last thing she can get out before she grabs his face in her hands and kisses him for the second time in twelve hours. He tastes like the flowers she used to suck nectar from in the meadow, the vanilla lip scrub he’d used earlier in her bathroom, like the chocolate in Provence and the strawberry puree in Paris.

 

She missed him so fucking much.


End file.
